


Celestial Bodies

by i_gaze_at_scully



Series: Movie night [9]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Implied/Referenced Sex, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-09-06 20:53:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16840219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_gaze_at_scully/pseuds/i_gaze_at_scully
Summary: I definitely struggled with which direction to take this series now that I’m approaching the hurricane of angst that is Diana Fowley. Took one of my headcanons and ran with it. Takes place right after The Pine Bluff Variant, covers basically all of season 5.





	Celestial Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> I definitely struggled with which direction to take this series now that I’m approaching the hurricane of angst that is Diana Fowley. Took one of my headcanons and ran with it. Takes place right after The Pine Bluff Variant, covers basically all of season 5.

They lapse, their movie nights. They lapse for a while. Neither of them expected there to be another movie night after _Citizen Kane_ , and neither of them knew how to move forward. 

He’d kissed her that night. Softly, chastely, both of them half awake at half past four when he figured he should leave before someone came knocking. After, he’d entirely unwillingly untangled himself from her. He knelt beside her bed for a moment more, tracing the tear stain tracks on her cheek and brushing the hair away from her face. She’d fallen back asleep and woken up to her mom sitting in the chair across the room. He’d gone home alone. 

Their alignment shifted after her cancer went into remission. There had always been a fluidity, a grace in their movements around one another. They communicated without words, rode brainwaves to the same destination. But now in the basement, they found themselves muttering apologies as they knocked into each other, bumping shoulders and stopping short. Their conversations were marked by constant starts and stops, cutting each other off without realizing, mutually waiting for the other to continue, only to sit in silence.

They never talked about that night. 

Scully didn’t think she’d be the one to try to get back on the horse first. But one day, she sat restless in a pea soup Florida motel room, fidgeting in the heat, mind wandering to how electric Mulder’s proximity had been all day. She knocked on his door with the swagger of a woman who had stared into the depths of hell and lived to tell the tale. She shed the heavy chainmail armor weighing her, weighing them down, and he did too. Until he panicked. Until he grabbed his coat and threw a weak apology of a smile her way before vanishing into the night. She downed both glasses of wine and ate the cheese on his bed.

Mulder for his part never felt so useless as he did when Emily died. He should’ve left the funeral home, absconded before she realized it was all his fault, all of it. He should’ve stayed and assured her there’d be hell to pay for this. He should’ve let her take it out on him. Scream and beat his chest, wail to her God in the rafters. Sob on the floor with her head in his lap, stain his dress pants. He should’ve, he should’ve, but all he did, all he could do, was turn his back and give her a moment’s privacy with the memory her dead daughter.

Linda Bowman brought his worst nightmares to life in a puddle of thick, red blood matted to fine, red hair. He couldn’t bring himself to speak to Scully for three days after that. 

She went away like normal people do, bought a t-shirt from the airport Hudson News and rented a goddamn convertible. Coastal Maine. Salt on skin, waves on shore, music to her ears. She should’ve known better though, to hope for reprieve. Her absence seemed to steady the wobbly earth she and Mulder traversed. 

The office saw fewer bumps and stumbles after Maine, heard fewer _oops_ and _sorrys_. They fell back into a rhythm, left feet giving way to waltzes. They ate lunch together every day, grabbed drinks after work sometimes, added non-work vocabulary back into their non-work vernacular. They came back from Texas the second time returning to playful banter. They make blanket forts in Massachusetts.

One day Scully jumps down the throat of a U.S. Attorney while Mulder tries to clear the remnants of his life flashing before his eyes and red-tinted rage from his vision. She breathes fire at everyone in sight as Leamus’ complicity and Mulder’s near-deadly puppet role become apparent. She whisks him away, unapologetically lead footed.

His apartment is dark, lit only by the glow of the fish tank and a street lamp outside struggling to give a damn. Days earlier she’d tended to his broken finger and divided mind here against his better judgment, and he’d nearly gotten himself killed for it. She sits him down on the couch and they remain glued to each other, adrenaline fading to oxytocin. They sit in silence as she rubs circles on his back and he rests his good hand on her thigh. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks gingerly, lowering her hand. 

“No,” he says simply, leaning his head on her shoulder. 

“Okay.”

Minutes later, he lifts his head and turns to look at her. She’s struck by how tired he is. A newly returned faith fading in the thinly stretched skin over his cheekbones, his nose, his jaw. His angles are sharp and hard, his eyes clouded.

“It’s been a while since our last movie night,” he half chuckles out of the blue. And it really had, especially if they didn’t count _Citizen Kane_. She thinks back and realizes the last real one was the day his mom went home from the hospital after her stroke. Before Roche and Schnauz and Jerse and cancer all the other embodiments of evil they had assimilated into their schemas of the world. 

“Yeah, it has.” She takes the opportunity to stretch, rolling out her neck and breathing into every tired muscle. “Have any beer?”

They never talk about that day, the day Mulder almost died. 

“I don’t think so, actually. But I have scotch.” He’s always been a glutton for punishment. She shrugs. 

“Works for me.” 

It’s gravity that pulls her legs from under her and spreads them over his thighs, magnetism that brings his hand to her hip. It’s the alcohol that lifts her up off the couch, stumbling towards the bathroom, returning with a glazed over hunger and a quiet confidence. She watches him watching her as she crosses her arms over her torso, fingering the hem of her shirt and lifting it up over her head. He’s frozen in place, every muscle tensed and poised to run. She pushes her pants off her hips and steps out of them towards him. It’s biology that leads her to lower herself onto his lap.

Some movie drones on in the background, so easily forgotten, easily ignored. Their movie night rules, and all their other rules, thrown out the window. He rests his forehead against hers, flicks his tongue along his bottom lip to taste the air that hovers by hers. 

“I almost lost you,” she whispers, reaching over his shoulders to drag her fingers down his back, arching him into her. They wander back up and he tips his head back when she runs her fingers through his hair. Selfishly, so selfishly, she needs him and she’s tired of denying it. She buckles under the weight of a world without him in it. 

“I know,” he breathes, eyes closed. He does. He knows the feeling. 

No fire engulfs them when they kiss. It’s heady, slow, punctuated by ragged breaths and deep-throated moans. There is a patient burning as unhooks her bra and she slouches, one shoulder at a time, till it falls onto his lap between them. They kindle their flame in feather kisses on her breasts and the hollow of her throat. The embers glow as she tugs on an earlobe with her teeth, splays her palms across each pectoral. 

They find their way back to each other in the cosmos, unable to stray far from orbit for long. As their bodies connect, the stardust in their weary souls mingles and they lock in. 

The credits roll, the screen fades to black, and they drift off to sleep on his couch.

In the morning, she is gone.

They never talk about that night. 


End file.
